The present invention relates in general to image data processing, and more specifically to systems, methods and computer program products for analyzing image data to identify and rank friends who are present within an imaging device's field of view. Even more specifically, the invention enables the imaging device to prioritize its focus on “better” friends by a joint function of a strength of their social relationships and an amount of visibility the imaging device has on the friend, which in turn depends on the device's imaging ability, ambient lighting conditions, crowd levels and physical distance between the friend and the person having the imaging device.
A face recognition system is a computer application capable of identifying or verifying a person from a digital image or a video frame from a video source. Social media/networking sites such as Facebook®, Twitter®, Flickr®, Google Plus®, and the like, include features that allow a person who uploads a photo to label or “tag” people depicted in the photo. For example, Facebook® includes functionality that allows users to locate a person who is present in a photo by clicking on the person's image in the photo and then typing a name of the person. Facebook® further offers functionality to auto-complete the name based on other existing Facebook® users. The user can repeat this process to locate and label each person within the photo. In this way, the user provides the standard input required for both face detection algorithms and face recognition algorithms. In general, face detection algorithms require an input of the number and location of faces present within an image, and face recognition algorithms require an input of the person label associated with each face object.